My poor blog… It gets so little love from me these days. Nothing ever feels important enough to report. I guess it started with Twitter taking so much of my attention way back in 2007. Oh, wait… No, it starts way before that… I guess it starts with my LiveUrinal getting a lot of comments and me realizing that people sometimes read the things I type on the innernets. Oh, and there was the thing with the girl saying she was going to sue me because I made a post containing before and after pics of her that I had done some Photoshop work on. (which I didn’t think was that big of a deal, but… Eh, whatever… Lesson learned!)
After that, I switched from embedding my LiveJournal into FANLESS.com to using WordPress. Comments went down a lot and I felt like nearly nobody was reading what I had to say. That’s pretty much how I like it. I get a little freaked out (and ready to duck a roundhouse!) when people tell me, in person, face to face, that they read my blog. And I get even more freaked out when my mother scolds me for saying things like “smack that bitch“, except my mother won’t say “bitch”, so she has to nod her head 5 times to indicate that the word she’s omitting has 5 letters. OH THE HORRORS!! What a terrible, terrible son I am! *insert mega eyeroll here!* To put into scope how offensive an F-bomb is to my mother, she once told me… Wait, no! On more than one occasion, she has told me that I shouldn’t watch The Simpsons because they use foul language and it’s too violent. I’m serious. I’m pretty sure my mom’s head would explode if she saw Mr. Goatse’s picture, or eel girl, or Tub Girl, or Mr Happy Hands getting a handful, or 2 girls…. I could go on and on, as I’m sure you can imagine. Oh, also… My mother doesn’t even have the internet, so someone is whispering things into her ear, and, frankly, I don’t appreciate it. I’m 34 years old, you know. What I do and say isn’t your business anymore. I don’t need people keeping an eye on me and reporting my doings to my mother! Really, I don’t! If anything, it makes me call my mom less because I assume she’s already heard about whatever because if it’s something important enough to tell my mom about, then I for sure already put it on the internet.
End. Of. Tangent.
My point is, I hate feeling like I can’t say things how I want to say them and that totally harshes on my wanting to post to my blog. Oh, and the thinking that not too many people were reading what I had to say was pretty much blown out of the water when I noticed I had 4,327,043 page views in 2007. That’s not a lie. Yeah, that averages out to over 360,000 a month. Thankfully, things have died down quite a bit since then. 2009 seems to be bouncing around between just over 180,000 page views in January, and just under 125,000 last month. That’s still over 4,000 per day. I just don’t get it. THERE IS NOTHING OF VALUE HERE! Really!
And I’ll tell you why there is nothing of value here… Well, I guess I kind of already started to say why in what you’ve already read in this post, but also because I’m lazy and I am usually able to say what I have to say in under 140 characters using Twitter. Except, my twitter account gets almost as little love as my blog these days. And I guess that’s because of… FaceBook!
Oh, boy! Here we go again… My facebook account goes back to 2006, predating my twitter account by about 3 months, and it would be even older than that if I had a .edu email address at my disposal. That was part of the sign-up requirements back when I first wanted to join facebook. But once I was able to join facebook, I did exactly nothing with my account. In early 2007 my twitter account came along. It too sat idle for a while, but after a few months I started adding a lot of local people. And then a few months later my twitter account helped me create some unintentional drama, and then an actual romantic relationship zOMG!!!
And then I was pretty much over twitter and started paying more attention to facebook, because my “real friends” and family were pretty much the only people in that circle. I had kind of polluted my twitter account by following too many celebrities/sites/bots/people I don’t know and probably never will. It became too hard to stay on top of the river of info I had created. I was too lazy to try to clean that mess up. But with facebook, I was able to keep in touch with classmates and family members that I otherwise probably wouldn’t even know if they were still alive. In fact, I have re-connected with a couple of old classmates that I thought might be dead, but now know aren’t!
And now, brave readers of 850+ words in this post so far, now is when I tell you why you probably didn’t know why I was in the hospital… The reason is… Because you’re not a facebook friend of mine! Oh, and because I’m too lazy to type out details to my photos I post with my phone. But don’t feel too bad… Apparently, some of my facebook friends didn’t know why I was in the hospital either. Never mind the fact that it was mentioned more than once between Monday and Friday.
And that’s why my blog is pretty much on life support.
I’m going to fill you in right now…
…so there I am, walking around Target, Sunday evening, after having a nice lunch at Bar B Que Beach Two, and making a stop at BestBuy, when I notice that the side of my gut is kind of cramping. It didn’t feel like my lunch was ready to come out of me, it felt more like a side ache you might get while jogging. I thought it was kind odd, since I hadn’t been doing anything that would resemble jogging. I figured it would go away sooner or later.
By the time I got home I felt like I had a sore muscle in my abdomen. Kind of like if I had done a bunch of sit ups. Except, the closest thing to a sit up I ever do is get out of bed. Oh, and my neck was starting to get a little stiff on me. I still don’t know why. That usually only happens when I’m under stress. I may have been stressing because I spent way more money that day than I had expected.
The next morning I went to work with a still tender/sore gut. It was just on the right side, and by then I was thinking it might be my appendix, so I was anticipating some of the usual telltale signs of Appendicitis to start showing up. I was otherwise feeling fine, and for the most part, I only felt the soreness when I would move. When I got home from work Monday night I was having trouble finding a comfortable position where I wasn’t feeling the soreness. It kind of kept me up all night, and I showed up to work 5 minutes late, as Mike pointed out to me. I got busy with my work, trying to finish everything up in case I would need to miss a couple of days. I tried to eat some of my sandwich, but I just wasn’t into it. I didn’t feel like eating anything. I just wasn’t hungry, even though I hadn’t eaten anything since a little bit of watermelon I had Monday night.
It was over 80º in my office, so it was kind of hard to tell if I had a fever or not, but as the day went on I started feeling more and more “off”. I had pretty much everything done by around 3 PM, and went home a little after that. I had wanted Lou to bring a thermometer over so I could see if I had a fever and decide what to do after that, but when she got to my place, she didn’t even come up… She just called me and told me to go downstairs so she could take me to the hospital.
We got the the University of Miami Hospital ER waiting area at about 4:20 PM on Tuesday. We filled out a form and sat down. Maybe 90 or so minutes later my name was called and my information was entered into a computer and my vitals were checked. My temperature was only 97.9º or something like that. No fever. I was kind of thinking about leaving because I wasn’t so sure that I had Appendicitis, since I didn’t have a fever. We stayed. About 90 more minutes passed and I was called into the registration area, and more information was entered into their system. We waited maybe another 90 minutes and then I was called into Triage. Since it had been a few hours since my vitals had been taken, they checked them again. My temperature was still just 98.1. A urinalysis and x-rays were ordered. I peed into the cup, and sat down for maybe another hour or so. We watched American Idol with a bunch of people that looked like they were having a much worse day than me, and I think it was just after 9 PM when I was taken back to have my x-rays done. About 3 hours after that, I was taken to a room in the ER. I was happy I didn’t have to be one of the people laying on a bed in the hallway I had seen when I went back for my x-rays!
My vitals were checked again, and it think it was 97.something again. Maybe 98+ but still no fever. My gut was hurting pretty good by then. A doctor came in and poked at my gut. I jumped. He seemed pretty sure it was my appendix that was wrecking my life. He ordered a CAT scan. A dude put a line into my arm, and took like 6 vials of my blood. A woman came and took another x-ray of my chest, in the little ER room. A nurse that I WOULD named Erica gave me some painkiller and fluids in my IV. I started feeling pretty good. A little bit after that a guy brought me a pretty big cup of contrast or Iodine or I don’t know what to drink before my CT. He said I had about an hour to drink it all, but to leave a little bit at the bottom to drink just before the scan. Then the Dr. came in and said to drink it as fast as I could. I asked him if I should drink all of it and he said yes. Then I fell asleep for a bit. I woke up at about 3 AM and soon after that the CT dude came to take me away for the CAT scan. He was bummed I had drank all of the juice. I told him what the Dr. had said and that I even asked him if I should drink all of it. He said it was ok, just that I would have to drink a little bit more. I got on the machine, he gave me a cup with a white concoction he had just mixed up. I drank his milkshake! I drank it up. It was nastier than the first stuff, but not as bad as I was expecting. I went into the machine, he told me to hold my breath. I did. He said to breathe. I did. This was repeated 4 or so more times. I went back to the ER room and waited for a while. The DR. came in and said my white blood count was only a little elevated and he couldn’t tell for sure, but he thought maybe my colon was inflamed/infected, not my appendix, and said I was going to be admitted so I could get some antibiotics via IV and so a surgeon and a gastroenterologist could check me out.
Lou went home at about 4:30 AM. I got moved into room 1136 on the 11th floor at about 6 or 6:30 AM. It was a long day.
The surgeon and 2 gastroenterologists spoke with me on Wednesday and they all seemed pretty sure that I had diverticulitis and that my appendix was fine. I was kind of bummed. I was told that I would need to stay in the hospital for a couple of days. I felt a lot better on Wednesday. Andrejkio stopped by to visit. He said Wendy had been by to visit too, but I was asleep then. Kim and Brandon came down from West Palm to visit in the evening. They left with Lou at about 9 PM. I got bored. I wished I had a laptop and the internets. I watched some TV and fell asleep.
I woke up at about 5 AM on Thursday, and soon after that the doctor that had been put on the board as “my doctor” came in. That was the first and only time I saw him. He asked me a few questions, poked at my gut, and listened to my breathing. I thought it was kind of odd that “my doctor” was in and out in like 3 minutes, and that was all I saw of him. The surgeon and one of the gastroenterologists came in and talked to me again. Dr. Miller (I think), the gastroenterologist said that I would maybe be going home Thursday night or Friday morning. I was happy but still a little nervous about going home. I was feeling better than I did on Wednesday, but only a little bit. I told all 3 doctors that, and they all seemed fine with it. Lou brought her laptop for me to use. I connected it to the internet through my phone using JoikuSpot. I watched The Burrowers and Passengers on the computer and fell asleep at some point. That was the end of Thursday.
Friday was mostly spent watching Wrecks to Riches on the Discovery channel. I got my last IV antibiotic at about 8:30 Friday morning, and my IV was taken out maybe 45 minutes later.
Lou showed up at about 3PM, and I left the hospital at a little after 4PM.
So now I guess I have diverticulitis and that’s why I was in the hospital this week.
The end.
Oh, P.S.: Now the REALLY fun part starts… I don’t have any health insurance and I have pretty much no idea how I will pay for my hospital stay. I can’t wait to see the bill! My guess is that I could have bought an OK car for the price of being in the hospital for 3 days.
At least all of the doctors and nurses and everyone was really nice. I hope I never have to, but if I do, I would totally go back to that hospital!
Thank you nice people at UM Hospital, for making me feel better!

I guess I have to have a high fiber diet. I feel like I’ve already been taking in quite a bit of fiber, but apparently I need more.
Personally, I think a watermelon seed got stuck in my gut and caused the whole mess, but I’m no doctor.